Art from a Welsh mathematician, photos of attractive young people in love, and a coffee maker, plus, music:
A quiet meditation on a particular kind of loss! Rap with fancy instruments in the background! A rock and roll song!
This is a good issue; you’ll like it.
Rorik Smith is an Artist and Draughtsman based in North Wales. / Dedicated to the solution of visual problems. / the development and application of / graphical representation systems / to investigate and record / the character of collections, / objects, environments and individuals / of personal or demonstrable significance.
Some charming highlights from the series Young Love by Brooklyn photographer Raphael Gaultier (Instagram). Booooooom has a feature. These pictures capture a lot about how these couples see each other, and how they want their relationships to be seen by others. There are more good ones at the links.
Ulla-Stina Wikander (Instagram) is a Swedish artist who takes old cross-stitch embroidery and small household objects and turns them into these things you see here. There’s tons more at her website and at the art blog Colossal, who’ve featured her a few times over the years. You can buy her work.
Here's an article and interview from 2019 with some insight into what the art is about:
By leaving their machine function, these objects exert a new fascination, we see them differently, we love them differently. These objects made for action take on a meditative, restful aspect.
There is also a political function in these arrangements: the objects are often household appliances from the 1970s, with the embroidery collected being even older. All are linked to the vision of the housewife who takes care of her family and has the time to embroider cushions for her home. By associating these two types of objects very closely, Ulla-Stina humorously reveals the path to another vision of femininity.
New music: Birthdays by Craig Finn. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). Singer-songwriter stuff. This album, A Legacy of Rentals, is a series of poignant, thematically linked vignettes good and I like it. Birthdays is the third track, and it’s written in the second person to a brother who’s far away.
Craig Finn is the lead singer of The Hold Steady, if that means anything to you. He’s got a voice that’s kinda like Bruce Springsteen’s.
New music: Run, Run, Run by McKinley Dixon. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube*). The third single off his album, which is out in June. Thoughtful and skillful rap over top of a gorgeous Burt Bacharach-style beat, all piano and orchestral bells and muted trumpet. He’s from Richmond, a VCU grad.
The B-side of this release, Tyler, Forever, is also good; here's a YouTube link. *The YouTube versions of these tracks blank out all the swear words though, so probably hit the Bandcamp for this one.
Old music: Happy Days by Closure in Moscow (2014). (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). This band is from Melbourne. This track has fun-time vibes like a more psychedelic The Presidents of the United States of America, but the band is probably better known for their 2009 album First Temple, where they have a very prog rock sound that’s a lot like The Mars Volta or Circa Survive.
I love the way they use the guitar tone in that opening riff to announce the tone of the track: the electric guitar sounds like a train horn going through an empty barrel; of course this is a feel-good song.
-Thomas
Fun issue! :)